All the letters on this page are glyphs. Non-letters like hieroglyphs are, as their name suggests, glyphs. A glyph is a written or carved symbol that has a specific meaning.

Forks have tines, which is a word that comes from the Germanic "Zinne" meaning pinnacle. A tine is a fixed metal part that sticks out from the main head of the fork. Forks may have as few as two or as many as four, typically speaking.

"Fenetre" is the French for window, so defenestrating someone means shoving them out of a window. It can be very dangerous to try this on any floor above the first.

Gambrinus is a semi-mythical historical figure from Flanders or thereabouts, who loved a drink and is sometimes mistakenly referred to as a saint. Being gambrinous does not mean being drunk, merely being nicely merry and sated.

A rasher is a thin slice of meat, usually used only to refer to bacon. Nobody's totally sure where it comes from but the word is at least four centuries old, proving that bacon has been appreciated for a long time.

Bruxism comes from "brukhein", the Greek for gnashing of the teeth, plus the English suffix -ism. If you find yourself doing it too often, see a dentist!

Scintillating literally means giving off sparks, in the sense of a very hot piece of metal struck with another piece of metal. However these days it also means a smile, a witty remark, or occasionally a great personality.

The interrobang was invented in the 1960s as a portmanteau of the words "bang" (for the exclamation part) and "interrogate". It is not used much due to never making it onto the QWERTY keyboard.

This word comes from the Greek and literally means "decorated with ribbons". The infinity symbol being a sideways 8 does look a lot like ribbons.

Pilling used to mean peeling, and garlic when peeled is very shiny. That's the origin of this word that does not just mean a bald person, but one who is viewed with contempt by virtue of being bald. Teasing people for baldness is a rather mean bullying tradition that goes back to the Bible.

These days if you try to buy a winklepicker, you will end up with an ankle boot with a pointy toe. In the 1950s it was less boot-like, but it still had the same wonderfully expressive name.

This comes from "tittle" meaning not very much, from the Latin titulus, and it's our favorite word today. Indeed, we truly struggled to winnow down the incredible offerings of the English language for this quiz, but this word was a shoe-in. We promise it's real.

Corpulent doesn't just imply fatness. It's a luxurious and extreme kind of fatness, that is like obesity but more expensively obtained (say, by eating an awful lot of foie gras instead of an awful lot of Kraft singles).

An agelast might find something funny, but they don't laugh. Still, don't kid yourself that they're laughing on the inside, because they probably aren't.

A nauseant is any agent that will make you feel sick if introduced into the area. For example, if you walk into a bathroom that hasn't been cleaned in a year, you could reasonably say that the air was full of nauseants.

A grommet is a stud or metal circle that reinforces the place where two pieces of fabric are joined. Typically you use it on hard leather and other materials that you cannot simply sew together without special equipment.

Klepto means to steal and biblio means a book. This is a Greek portmanteau word that literally means "book-stealer".

Lollygagging isn't just procrastinating or dithering. It means holding up other people and not getting things done, both at the same time, with an extra potential implied nuance of getting out of doing your fair share of the work. All in all, it's a fine descriptive word.

This word is not exactly an onomatopoeia (a word that literally sounds like what it is, such as pop or snap). However, if you heard it but did not know what it meant, the context and the sound of the word combined would certainly help. A curmudgeon is like Oscar the Grouch, a person who just finds something to be annoyed about no matter what.

An insalubrious neighborhood is not just unsafe, it also means that it is dirty, poorly maintained, and probably ugly. This excellent word carries multiple nuances and is not pretentious, being instead a very good ten-dollar word to introduce into conversation.

A dendrite is the long bit on a neuron (brain cell) that connects it to another neuron. The number of such connections is believed to be even more important to being able to think than how many actual neurons you have.

Discombobulation carries more than one nuance. Unlike flummoxed where you're merely puzzled, or upset where you are merely distressed, it combines the two, meaning you have to be confused, thrown off your game and in distress to be discombobulated.

A whippersnapper is a young person with confidence that is not justified by thier resume, usually characterized by irritating bragging and never admitting that they are wrong about anything. They generally tend to either grow out of it or somehow achieve elected office.

This word appears in a Lear poem from 1871 and it's pure nonsense - or it was. It has since become a sort-of real word. However these days "spork" is a much better word for a similar thing. The runcible spoon is Lear teasing his pal George Runcy.

"Phonics" meaning of or related to sound is the root here. The first syllable in this instance comes from the Greek "kakos" meaning bad. Hence, "bad sound" is the literal meaning.

Kerfuffle is actually a mix of the old Scots word car, meaning bend, and English fuffle meaning disordered. So a kerfuffle means that things have gone awry.

Just as idolatry is the worship of idols, zoolatry is the worship of animals. If you worship an idol that is shaped like an animal, it's really a judgment call which one you call this.

Umbra comes from the Latin for shadow, and is the root of umbrella, among other words. Umbriferous is something of a ten-dollar word and not to be used in ordinary conversation, as it might be pretentious.

A comet that goes close to the sun is a sun-grazer. It's entirely self-explanatory. We put it here to trick you after some tough ones, so if you didn't fall for it, well done!

If you fall into a black hole, you get stretched really long, like spaghetti. It's a case of scientists realizing that not everything needs an obscure and impossibly unmemorable name. Sometimes they just call it like they see it.

"Rhino" means "of or relating to the nose". It's the same prefix as in the word "rhinoceros", an animal named for its giant schnozz. Hence, rhinoplasty = nose surgery.

Just as Pangaea was a continent with all the land and pansexual means attraction to male, female and everything in between, panurgic means being ready for anything. "Pan" is from the Greek for everything.

Just as monogamy means marrying one person, and misanthropy means disliking all people, "mis+ogamy" means hating marriage. It doesn't just mean hating your own marriage or a specific one though, it means hating marriage generally.

Cantillating is like singing but it carries the specific tone of the church or temple. It comes from the Latin for song, and is related to cantor, cantata, etc.

Apoptosis is when a cell reaches the natural end of its life. It is a good thing; if cells do not die and just keep replicating, that is called cancer!